The first issue involved the central air vents, which are supposed to retract into and rise from the dash when either the car or the HVAC system is turned on or off. When they’re down, the dashboard looks clean and the trick is pretty cool—except when the vents fail to deploy, which happened to us once. And on the same journey, the central infotainment display never activated despite furious finger jabs. A few hundred miles later, the vent snit happened to another staffer, along with a flickering dome light.

All of these issues cured themselves within a few ignition cycles and have yet to occur again, but we did need to visit the dealer for a problem with the right rear taillight. It turns out that the LED bulbs in the Jaguar’s taillights cannot be replaced. So when they expire like ours did, the entire taillight assembly must be swapped out. Since the car is still under warranty, this job was performed at no cost to us, but the taillight kerfuffle would have cost us $634.37—$417.77 for the assembly and $216.60 for labor—if we were out of the warranty period. Ouch.